Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
To be fair, it doesn't look like an official Saudi government position, just some stupid locals. There have been much more prominent groups who have made similar claims; a few years back IRNA ran a story about spying squirrels. Also, it's not like the military has never thought of using animals for their work - the US has trained dolphins as minesweepers and the like. But obviously this particular application is rather ridiculous.
Dolphins: basketball-sized brains
Vultures: acorn-sized brains (well OK, perhaps walnut)

And the shark bit is frackin hilarious. Um, didn't y'all know that proportionately sharks almost never attack humans? Shipping a bunch of sharks to the Red Sea (SEA, mind you) would be spectacularly inefficient.

Which leads me to the main point. Such propaganda is particularly dependent on the ignorance of your audience, which is a specialty of Arab/Persian autocracies: have very ignorant populations who then respond favorably to idiotic scapegoating.